Started in November 2010, daily postings from the Keystone State
Education Coalition now reach more than 4050 Pennsylvania education
policymakers – school directors, administrators, legislators, legislative and
congressional staffers, Governor's staff, current/former PA Secretaries of
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principals, charter school leaders, PTO/PTA officers, parent advocates, teacher
leaders, business leaders, faith-based organizations, labor organizations,
education professors, members of the press and a broad array of P-16 regulatory
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These daily emails are archived and searchable at http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.org
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Advocates
for public schools in Pennsylvania say there's no data to show whether students
receiving vouchers have improved academic outcomes.
Public News Service
May 3, 2019
HARRISBURG, Pa. –
Expanding tax credits for private-school tuition will
benefit the rich at the expense of public education, according to public-school advocates in the Commonwealth. The
Pennsylvania House Education Committee this week voted to approve a $100
million increase for the Education Improvement Tax Credit, a school voucher
program that pays tuition at private and religious schools. Some critics
have labeled the tax credit a "secret school tax," because the funds
to pay for the vouchers are diverted from the state budget. Susan Spicka,
executive director of Education Voters of Pennsylvania, says House
Bill 800 is far
from revenue-neutral. "This is prioritizing private-school tuition breaks,
rather than putting $100 million into school safety, property-tax relief or
additional resources for public schools,” says Spicka. Proponents of the measure
say it gives children in poverty increased educational opportunities, although
the law prohibits collection of economic data to back up that claim. Spicka
points out that in the 2014 to 2015 school year, the tax credit benefited some
of the most expensive private schools in the state. "Twenty-three of the
schools in Pennsylvania that have some of the highest tuition, that educate
some of the most affluent children in the state,” says Spicka. “They got almost
10% of this funding." She notes the average tuition at those schools,
concentrated in Philadelphia and Allegheny counties, is $32,000 a year. Spicka
adds that the $100 million increase would only be the beginning. The
legislation includes a provision for automatic 10% increases every year, which
would raise it to $544 million a year in ten years. "We've spent a billion
dollars on these vouchers since they were enacted years ago, and we have no
idea if they have helped improve educational outcomes for students or if
they've been wasted,” says Spicka. The bill could come up for a vote in the
House as early as next week.
Blogger commentary: It is unfortunate
that @PaLegis
is unwilling to fund its own basic ed funding formula that would give hundreds
of thousands more children the opportunity to attend better schools. Prospects
are NOT looking up for those children who are being told that they will just
have to wait 20 more years for the resources that they need in order to meet
state standards.
HB800: Pennsylvania’s Choice
‘Escalator’
The Legislature moves to expand credits for
education scholarships.
Wall Street Journal
Editorial By The Editorial Board May 1, 2019 7:08 p.m. ET (paywall)
Prospects are
looking up for Pennsylvania children who have been shut out of the state’s
school choice program. A bill is now moving quickly through the Legislature to
give thousands more children the opportunity to attend a better school.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/pennsylvanias-choice-escalator-11556752125?reflink=share_mobilewebshare
State Sen. Ryan Aument no longer Senate Education
Committee chair
Lancaster Online by
ALEX GELI | Staff
Writer May
1, 2019
State Sen.
Ryan Aument of Landisville is no longer the Senate Education Committee chair
after being selected as the Republican caucus secretary.
State Sen. Ryan
Aument has traded one legislative leadership role for another. The Landisville
Republican, who in March was chosen as the Senate
Republican caucus secretary, no longer
serves as the Senate Education Committee chair, a position he
held since
January. State Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati this week announced that Republican Sen. Wayne Langerholc has replaced Aument as chair.
Aument remains a member of the committee, which he’s been a part of each of the
past four years. He previously served on the House Education Committee for two
years as a state representative.
Langerholc picked to head up Senate education committee
Johnstown Tribune
Democrat By David Hurst dhurst@tribdem.com Apr 30, 2019
A Cambria County
lawmaker has been picked to lead the state Senate’s education committee. State
Sen. Wayne Langerholc Jr., R-Richland Township, was named chairman of the
high-profile 11-member committee, which is tasked with vetting, shaping and
recommending legislation that impacts the education system. Pennsylvania spends
approximately $6 billion annually on basic education alone, not including
additional resources allocated for preschool programs and higher education. Langerholc’s
appointment comes as the state has been revamping its funding allocations to
public schools, increasing support for career-readiness and backing efforts to
improve school safety and security at a time school shootings have been on the
rise nationwide. Langerholc said he was “excited and honored” to take on the
role – but also noted that it’s a serious one. “With education compiling 40
percent of our state budget, it is vital that we ensure these tax dollars are
allocated fairly and equitably,” Langerholc said.
Pennsylvania Approves $40 Million in Grants for School
Safety
USA Herald By Marivic Cabural Summers May 2, 2019
Pennsylvania
Governor Tom Wolf announced the approval of $40 million in grants for school
safety and $7.5 for community violence prevention and reduction. The School
Safety and Security Committee under the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and
Delinquency (PCCD) approved the grants. According to Gov. Wolf, there are 234
recipients for the school safety grants and 25 recipients for the community
violence prevention and reduction grants across Pennsylvania.
Ensuring
Pennsylvania schools are safe and secure
In a statement, the Governor said, “These grants are the mechanism we need to create
local strategies that will increase safety for our children and our teachers
and prevent
violence in
classrooms and communities across the commonwealth.” In addition, Gov. Wolf
stressed, “Schools should be safe, secure places for our children to focus on
their education and on preparing themselves for a lifetime of success, not
another place we need to worry about sending our children. Awarding these
grants to more than 200 schools means a safer Pennsylvania.”
“This
$40 million will provide some much-needed assistance to ensure our schools are
safe; however, the total request from schools was $177.6 million, which
illustrates that we must continue to fund this vital program,” Langerholc said.
Pennsylvania grants $40M in competitive school safety
grants
WHYY/Keystone
Crossroads By Min Xian May 2, 2019
The state has
approved $40 million in grants for school districts to improve safety.
Over a dozen school
districts in Central Pennsylvania received grants, including the Altoona Area
School District, the Keystone Central School District and the Smethport Area
School District. None of Centre County’s school district was awarded a
competitive grant.
These competitive
grants are in addition to $25,000 that most districts received last year.
Pennsylvania
enacted Act 44 in reaction to the school shooting in Parkland, Florida in 2018.
“This grant program
has already proven to be very successful in helping local school districts take
the steps they need to make our students safer and our school buildings more
secure,” Sen. Wayne Langerholc, Jr. (R-Bedford) said in a statement. He is on
the 17-member School Safety and Security Committee, which approved the grants.
PSBA/PASA/PAIU Advocacy Day 2019 Highlights & Recap
PSBAvideo Published on May 2, 2019
About 200 school
directors and superintendents met with legislators in Harrisburg during
Advocacy Day on April 29, 2019. See footage from the event in this installment
filmed at the Capitol that afternoon. Learn more about areas of focus for the
day, including charter funding reform. Links for more information regarding
PSBA's key issues:
Adequate Funding: https://www.psba.org/issue/fair-funding/
Charter School
Reform: https://www.psba.org/issue/charter-sc...
PlanCon Reform: https://www.psba.org/issue/plancon-re...
The forces behind Philly’s high teacher turnover
Inquirer by Jessica Calefati, Dylan Purcell Kristen A. Graham, Updated: May 3, 2019- 5:00 AM
A stable teaching
staff is crucial to a school’s academic success, but we found that thousands of
the city’s most vulnerable children attend Philadelphia schools where teachers
shuffle in and out at destabilizing rates — 25 percent is cause for alarm, experts
say. Our
investigation found 26 district schools that have lost at least 25 percent of their teachers for four years
straight or lost more than one-third in each of the past two school years.
Richard M. Ingersoll, a University of Pennsylvania professor and expert in
school staffing, called these findings “appalling.”
Why is there so much teacher churn?
Schools beset by
turnover typically fill their openings with teachers new to the district. More
than half of the teachers who currently work at the 26 schools have less than
four years of experience in the system. At Jay
Cooke Elementary School, for
example, which has a faculty of 30, more than 130 teachers have worked there in
just seven years.
New “Good to Great” grants seek to boost early literacy
Ten elementary
schools to have their projects funded and evaluated over 18 months
The notebook Maya
Wernick May 2 — 7:08 pm, 2019
Ten elementary
schools have received grants from The Fund for the School District of
Philadelphia with the goal of strengthening early literacy programs. The new
“Good to Great” grants, which range in size from $20,000 to nearly $75,000,
were funded by the William Penn Foundation. The “Good to Great” grants,
which totaled nearly $536,000, were designed to help schools tackle challenges
faced by particular student populations, and focused specifically on
grade-level reading proficiency by third grade. The District already has
early-learning initiatives and is committed to reading proficiency for all
students, but the grants were meant to give schools funding for projects that
would assist them in ways that work for each school. A grant review team from
the District and Fund chose the winning schools from 78 applicants, who were
then narrowed down to 20 finalists. The schools came up with projects with
specific outcome goals and outlined how their proposed ideas would contribute
to increased reading proficiency.
Here's How Education Budget Plans From Trump and House
Democrats Stack Up
Education Week
Politics K12 Blog By Andrew Ujifusa on May 1, 2019 11:40 AM
We now have two
pretty different visions for what federal education spending should look like. In March, President
Donald Trump released a fiscal 2020 budget request that would cut
more than $7 billion from
the U.S. Department of Education's budget—it would eliminate
29 programs, and create
$5 billion in annual tax credits for educational choice. (Those tax credits
would be administered by the Treasury Department). As a counterpoint, House
Democrats unveiled legislation at the end of April for Education Department
funding that would increase agency's
budget by more than $4.4 billion and beef up several major programs. Keep in mind that so far
in the Trump era, Congress has decided to provide pretty small increases to the
department over two fiscal years. But it's still instructive to compare what
the president wants for Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos' department and what
Democrats have in mind. Check out our interactive chart below of how
various programs would fare in the Trump budget request versus the House
Democrats' bill, as well as what current funding is in fiscal 2019.
School Funding Briefing Thursday, May 23, 2019 6:30 –
8:00 PM
Drexel Hill Middle School, 3001 State Road,
Drexel Hill, PA 19026
In 2019, the Public
Interest Law Center is celebrating 50 years of fighting for justice, and
preparing for 50 more, through a series of 50th anniversary events.
As part of this
series, the Upper Darby School Board is pleased to host the Public Interest Law
Center at Drexel Hill Middle School on Thursday, May 23rd, for a School Funding
Briefing.
Pennsylvania has
the largest funding gap in the country between low-wealth and high-wealth
school districts. Pennsylvania is also ranked 46th in the share of funding that
comes from the state, leaving local taxpayers to take on rising costs. How did
we get here? At the briefing, you will learn the basics of education funding
and how it works in Pennsylvania, as well as ways you can get involved in
advocacy for fully funded public education. You will also learn about the
latest developments in the Law Center's school
funding lawsuit.
Afterward, you will
have a chance to meet Law Center attorneys working on this landmark case, as
well as mingle with other interested in Pennsylvania education.
Do you have strong communication and leadership skills and a vision for
PSBA? Members interested in becoming the next leaders of PSBA are encouraged
to submit an Application for Nomination no later than
May 31 to PSBA's Leadership Development Committee (LDC).
The nomination process: All persons seeking nomination for elected
positions of the Association shall file with the Leadership Development
Committee chairperson an Application for Nomination (.PDF) on a form to be
provided by the Association expressing interest in the office sought. The
Application for nomination shall be marked received at PSBA Headquarters or
mailed first class and postmarked no later than the application deadline
specified in the timeline established by the Governing Board to be considered
timely-filed.” (PSBA
Bylaws, Article IV, Section 6.E.). Application Deadline: May 31, 2019
Open positions are:
- 2020 President-Elect
(one-year term)
- 2020 Vice
President (one-year term)
- 2020-22
Central At-Large Representative – includes Sections 2, 3, 6, and
7 (three-year term)
- 2020-21
Sectional Advisors – includes Sections 1, 3, 5 and 7 (two-year term)
PSBA Tweet March
12, 2019 Video Runtime: 6:40
In this installment of #VideoEDition, learn about legislation
introduced in the PA Senate & House of Representatives that would save
millions of dollars for school districts that make tuition payments for their
students to attend cyber charter schools.http://ow.ly/RyIM50n1uHi
PSBA Summaries of Senate Bill 34 and House Bill 526
PSBA Sample Board Resolution in Support of Statewide
Cyber Charter School Funding Reform
PSBA Sample Board Resolution in Support of Senate Bill 34
and House Bill 256
How much could your school district and taxpayers save if
there were statewide flat tuition rates of $5000 for regular ed students and
$8865 for special ed.? See the estimated savings by school district here.
Education Voters PA
Website February 14, 2019
https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/billInfo/bill_history.cfm?syear=2019&sind=0&body=S&type=B&bn=34
Has your state representative cosponsored HB526?
Any comments contained herein are my comments, alone, and
do not necessarily reflect the opinions of any other person or organization
that I may be affiliated with.
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